Living in a total backwater and being two days drive away from the border that Turkey shares with Syria, Iraq and Iran, not to mention a very long way from Istanbul and Ankara, we’ve always felt somewhat insulated from the ‘real world’. That all changed with the failed coup of July 2016 and the many terror attacks that followed.
Two of the attacks were launched this side of our nearest city, Antalya, making it uncomfortably close to home. We wondered if we should leave. On the night of the coup we stayed up into the early hours, glued to the BBC and occasionally hanging nervously over the terrace to see if we could see or hear anything amiss. Our Turkish neighbours were doing the same – unlike us, they didn’t have the option to leave. It all happened just two days before we departed for our summer holiday in Britain, and we began to wonder if we were going to be crossing the bay to Kastellorizo in a kayak or sailing dinghy to pick up a ferry to Athens instead of catching a Thomas Cook flight from Dalaman to Birmingham.
Continue reading “Six things I love about Kaş”
Have you ever seen such a forlorn fruit bowl? A couple of pomegranates – fresh from the tree in the garden of Erol’s garage, where our car had its pre-MOT checks this week – alongside the inevitable black bananas (see last week’s post) and a lonely as-yet-unripe avocado.
Is it just our household that only ever seems to have black bananas? I am sure they are yellow when I buy them (or green, even) but by the time I glance at them again, they look as though they are suffering from terminal black spot.
When is a cake a cake and when is it a torte? Sachertorte is the one that everyone knows, and it turns out that ‘torte’ is simply a German word for ‘cake’, though Sachertorte originated in Vienna of course.
The summer in Cornwall appears to be over. Falmouth Week has passed, the tourists are all in a very long line on the A39, heading ‘back to England’, and the hedgerows are absolutely groaning with blackberries after basking in glorious sunshine for what seems like months.
No recipe today, I am simply curious, and I am confined to barracks because it is hoofing down with rain. I was just browsing the rather impressively organised stats that WordPress very kindly collates for us and I am intrigued to know why so many people are looking at the 
We have just returned to Cornwall after spending a few weeks in Warwickshire with our families – hence no blog posts for a while! I am sure we couldn’t have picked a hotter spot in the British Isles if we had tried. We tortured ourselves daily by watching the BBC weather report and seeing that, back here in Cornwall, it was a whole ten degrees cooler. Obviously we’ve come back to cool weather and rain, though it does make quite a change. We will be back in Turkey in a few weeks, so there will be plenty more sunshine to come. 
We’ve been back in Cornwall for three weeks and, ahem, I believe there have been no blog posts during that time. We’ve been busy trying to get the house finished and there has also been the lure of the unusually fabulous British weather, so we thought we’d squeeze in some walks and see a few more places before the mass arrival of tourists when the school holidays start in a couple of weeks time.
It has to be faced up to – summer has arrived. This morning it was 33 degrees by 9am, so I dread to think what it will be by midday, and we’re only just into June. We’ve avoided the air conditioning during the night so far, but I was sorely tempted at about 3am when both of us, and at least two cats, were practically fighting over the optimum position on the bed for maximum overhead-fan benefit. Some years, when we were still naive enough to be here during July and August, and the electricity has gone off during the night, I have slept on a lilo in the pool – I figured I would wake up if I fell off. Last night, I could have gone for that option if it hadn’t meant blowing up a lilo at 3am and Gorgeous Gordon the feline lilo-killer hadn’t been prowling around looking for potential latex victims. 
We are planning a beach trip tomorrow. This is becoming something of a habit of late – partly because our neighbours seem to have the noisiest visitors in the world, and this could possibly incite me to cross words if I have to put up with too much more of it, which I am keen to avoid in the interests of good neighbourly relations. 
aviewfrommykitchen.com 